2nl to 25nl

Thanks guys, I honestly totally get what you are saying. Fundiver sort of touched on the reason in the last part of his post.

Reason number 1) I have had to withdraw my roll SO many times since 2009 when I first started playing and which isn't even shown here in this thread which started in 2015. It's kind of ridiculous so I too, have promised myself that no matter what, I will not be withdrawing my roll. This time I am aiming for as high as I can go. I've moved countries a few times but my life is now somewhat stable so I'm hoping I can just grind it out over however long it takes to get to where I want to be. I'm not in any rush to reach higher stakes. Which leads me to point two.

2) I never like to deposit money that isn't won from poker and I always start small and grind up. I really like to have 100 buyins for the roll that I'm going to play. I know this is super conservative for the micro stakes and I get that this isn't great, but my mental game does so much better when I'm fully rolled for the stakes I'm playing (I obviously don't do this at the lowest state, I just deposit a few quid). I just have to acknowledge that after 15 years of playing this game, I will never be comfortable with excessive risk. I have had some really horrible downswings (for micro stakes) where I've run close to the red EV line on the Primedope variance calculator haha.

I mean that's actually kind of funny regarding poker. Over 150k hands at 10bb/100 you can still be losing if you run the simulation a number of times.

What games do you play these days Fundiver?

TheGenera1 said:

It's kind of ridiculous so I too, have promised myself that no matter what, I will not be withdrawing my roll.

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Its ok to withdraw money from your poker bankroll, if you are a winning player. Just not so much, that bankroll management prevents you from playing the stakes, where you have the highest hourly winrate. I am sure, this belgian SnG grinder has made multible withdrawals. And this is fine, since he dont need a $0,5 mio. bankroll to play the games, he play.

TheGenera1 said:

This time I am aiming for as high as I can go.

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TheGenera1 said:

I'm not in any rush to reach higher stakes.

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These two statements are kind of contradictory. We do not live forever, and while we can continue to play poker even at retirement age, our ability to compete on a top level will decline with age at some point. So if we really want to "make it" in poker, time is a valuable ressource. We also dont know, how long online poker will be around, or how tough the games will get. If you were "in no rush to reach higher stakes" during the early days of online poker, you obviously missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

TheGenera1 said:

I never like to deposit money that isn't won from poker and I always start small and grind up. I really like to have 100 buyins for the roll that I'm going to play.

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Which is why, I think, this approach is a major mistake. Obviously we do not want to end up in the "problem gambler" category, and I am all for the idea of proving yourself in the micros before trying to move up. If we start out playing for instance 25NL cash or $10 tournaments, its pretty easy to get stuck several tousind dollars, before we are able to beat these stakes. And perhaps we get demotivated and stop.

However if we have already taken money out of poker, and we were forced to withdraw our entire poker bankroll to pay for real live expenses, then I dont see any reason at all, why we should not put some of that money back into poker, as soon as we are able to. Like maybe we had a bonus from our job, we were able to work some extra hours, we got some tax money back. Whatever it might be.

"Starting small and grinding up" is a complete waste of time, if we are already a proven winner. And related to this overly conservative bankroll management will also hold us back. 100 buyins might be reasonable, if you play high stakes online cash games, where even winners will have a tiny winrate of a few BB/100, and variance will be enormous.

But with a smaller bankroll, 100 buyins is MTT bankroll management not cash game bankroll management. Like if you have a $800 bankroll, then its reasonable to not play any higher than $7.5 MTTs, but its completely unreasonable to still play 5NL or 4NL cash, just because you dont yet have 100 x the full buyin for 10NL.

If anything its actually more reasonable to allow yourself a few shots at 25NL, if you find a particular soft table. Like maybe you break the taboo and dont buy in full and/or use all-in cash out insurance to limit variance, but you get to play on a really good table, where you expected hourly winrate is much higher compared to a bad 10NL table. If you lose $100 at 25NL, you still have $700 left, which is more than enough to play 10NL.

Several years ago I did a "$100-$10.000" bankroll challenge on PokerStars and made a thread about it here on CC. And maybe its ok to do something like this once, especially since I got lucky and hit a sunrun very early. Meaning that it was only a few month, before I was back at the stakes, I had been playing, before I was forced to withdraw my poker bankroll.

But I am not going to do this ever again. If the balance in my poker account on a site, where I want to play, become lower, than I like it to be, then I will top it up, as soon as I am able to do so. If you are a winning player, you need to view poker as a sort of business, and to run any kind of business successfully, you need to be willing to make an investment and run a risk of losing that money.

TheGenera1 said:

I know this is super conservative for the micro stakes and I get that this isn't great, but my mental game does so much better when I'm fully rolled for the stakes I'm playing (I obviously don't do this at the lowest state, I just deposit a few quid). I just have to acknowledge that after 15 years of playing this game, I will never be comfortable with excessive risk.

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It you want to reach higher stakes, then this is a part of your mental game, that you need to work on. This is almost as detrimental to your chance of success as having tilt issues.

TheGenera1 said:

What games do you play these days Fundiver?

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I began with cash games, but for the last several years I have been playing tournaments. On working days I mostly play On Demand SnGs on PokerStars and ACR Poker with a few single table SnGs and turbo/hyper MTTs mixed in. In weekend and holidays I also play regular speed MTTs. I play for the SnG leaderboard on ACR Poker and get $50 back basically every single week. In top of that I have also enjoyed a sunrun on both PokerStars and ACR Poker since the beginning of 2026. Which is nice after a somewhat rough and mediocre 2025

I appreciate your long post. And honestly, you make all good points. It's not easy to argue with them you have given me something to think about.

I do find losing days uncomfortable. There is a lot for me to work on in the mental side of the game. I'm not a gambler at all, I despise blackjack and other games of chance, and for me, the random element of poker is a necessary evil that keeps recreational players in the game and nothing more. I don't like flipping and even at micro stakes I tense up when I'm all in as a favourite in big pots. I'm unsure how to overcome these things. I do all sorts of mental work but the physical adrenaline sensation I get when I'm all in hoping to hold doesn't seem to go away. Especially if I play under rolled. So I suppose you could say that I have a lot to overcome if I am to climb stakes. I in theory, have some ability at the game, and I never really go on donky tilt or anything like that but I do suffer from emotions at the table which I constantly suppress and play on.

I also have a really bad habit with the cashier and PT4 while playing. You can probably guess what it is. But it's really hard for me not to check because of the way my brain is wired. I guess I have been vague, but it's, somewhat personal

The funny thing is, one could easily argue that this game isn't "for me" that my brain and mental approach is poorly suited for games of chance etc and they would, of course, be correct. But conversely, it's a game I love, I suppose I am a winner at, and is a shame not to pursue as it's my biggest passion.

Maybe by putting this post out there, I can hold myself to account. You can probably tell that even when I made this topic back in 2015, I was doing it to get reassurance that I was ready to jump up stakes from 2nl haha.

TheGenera1 said:

I do all sorts of mental work but the physical adrenaline sensation I get when I'm all in hoping to hold doesn't seem to go away.

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I am not immune to this either. As a tournament/SnG player I have a ton of hands, that are all-in before the river. And even though it totally should not matter, how the board runs out, once the "all-in" button has been pressed, I still cant help looking and have some kind of emotional reaction, if the opponent hit a 2-outer or 3-outer on the river. If you want to work on this, a trick is to stack your tables, so that you only see the last table to demand your action. This is not an optimal way to play in the long run, but it force you to focus only on the decision, you need to make right now.

TheGenera1 said:

So I suppose you could say that I have a lot to overcome if I am to climb stakes.

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This is true. As we climb stakes, swings are obviously going to become larger. And if it really bother you to lose say $50 in a session, then how are you going to handle it mentally, when you lose $500 in a session?

TheGenera1 said:

I also have a really bad habit with the cashier and PT4 while playing. You can probably guess what it is.

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Yeah this is definitely not great. On most sites you can hide the balance in the cashier. On PokerStars it still tells me, every time I register for a new tournament, but at least it makes it somewhat easier to not constantly focus on this number. PT4 can be set (actually its a default setting) to only show your last 100 hands, which prevents you from constantly checking your result for the current section. Maybe it can also help to show your stack in BB instead of dollars, which is possible on some sites.

TheGenera1 said:

The funny thing is, one could easily argue that this game isn't "for me" that my brain and mental approach is poorly suited for games of chance etc and they would, of course, be correct. But conversely, it's a game I love, I suppose I am a winner at, and is a shame not to pursue as it's my biggest passion.

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Maybe you just need to accept, you will never reach the very top. I have accepted that already, since I am well past the best age for playing online poker, and I am not sure, I even want to spend endless hours studying with solvers etc.

fundiver199 said:

I am not immune to this either. As a tournament/SnG player I have a ton of hands, that are all-in before the river. And even though it totally should not matter, how the board runs out, once the "all-in" button has been pressed, I still cant help looking and have some kind of emotional reaction, if the opponent hit a 2-outer or 3-outer on the river. If you want to work on this, a trick is to stack your tables, so that you only see the last table to demand your action. This is not an optimal way to play in the long run, but it force you to focus only on the decision, you need to make right now.

This is true. As we climb stakes, swings are obviously going to become larger. And if it really bother you to lose say $50 in a session, then how are you going to handle it mentally, when you lose $500 in a session?

Yeah this is definitely not great. On most sites you can hide the balance in the cashier. On PokerStars it still tells me, every time I register for a new tournament, but at least it makes it somewhat easier to not constantly focus on this number. PT4 can be set (actually its a default setting) to only show your last 100 hands, which prevents you from constantly checking your result for the current section. Maybe it can also help to show your stack in BB instead of dollars, which is possible on some sites.

Maybe you just need to accept, you will never reach the very top. I have accepted that already, since I am well past the best age for playing online poker, and I am not sure, I even want to spend endless hours studying with solvers etc.

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Thank you for your replies. For me, I find that being over rolled helps so I guess that is the strategy I will try and employ even if it means taking longer to climb stakes.

I'm sure I will not reach the very top, but I owe it to my self to at least try to see where I can get to without constantly cashing out my roll due to life situations.

All the best at the tables! I will move my roll over to Stars at some point, so see you there!

Took the plunge and am buying a solver. I took your guys advice, moved up to 10nl, made a handful of buyins and thought I would reinvest in myself. I'm never going to get "good" unless I put in the work. So will be buying GTO+. I think it's the best value for money. And I'm happy that it's being funded by poker.

TheGenera1 said:

Right so it went pretty damn well today, I think I played ok. Only hand that annoyed me was getting QQ in on the flop v AA in a large 3bet pot. Problem was I didn't have enough information on him at that point so didn't know he was a nit.

Finished the session up $23 Think I'm comfortable enough playing now not to have to move down to 2nl if I lose a few buy ins.

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Make sure you do a deep dive on that 3 bet hand. When we move up in stakes Villains are much less likely to blast off in 3 bet pots with weak ranges-Not that they are nitty but they may know they need a refined range to get in 100bb stacks or larger on most flops. So review the hand flop interaction to make sure a Good Villain would have enough range for you to stack off QQ.

Good luck and keep winning

I appreciate the feedback. That particular hand was played in 2015

Just sat down at the table and saw this guy was a whale with 80 VPIP and odd stack size. No notes on him other than VPIP of 80 over 20 hands or something which I hadn't seen played that day.

Is this a punt? I mean without watching any hands before I mean. Obviously so many whales punt off here with AJ or random rubbish. But if you have just sat down and have 20 hands on the person with a VPIP of 80, do you fold? I kind of did actually think that he had the hand that he had. It was the one that made sense on the river given the action. But honestly, I tend to always think of the hands that beat me more than the ones that I beat.



View attachment PokerStars Hand #261480137438.webm

Not even close to a fold, not sure why you checked the turn seems like an easy triple for value

I agree with Station_Master. The reason to change to a check-call mode with strong hands, is, that we think, its more profitable to induce bluffs than to bet for value. So first off, when we take this line, the intention is to check-call and snap off those bluffs. We are not checking TPTK to check-fold in a 4-bet pot, even though his 3-bet size was silly.

Maybe we can check-fold the river, if the runout is completely terrible, but here the board was so dry, that there is hardly any river card, thats really bad for us. So already, when you check the turn, the decision should have been made to call any turn bet and then also call pretty much any river bet, he might make. Maybe its not great, if the river is another J, but I would still call him down, since he could have floated you with KQ and think, his top pair is good, or he could be on some random bluff, which is the whole reason to check in the first place.

And second in order to take this line we typically need some information about the opponent, which you did not have here. Most 80% VPIP players make more calling mistakes than betting mistakes, so why not just go bet, bet, jam for value and let him make some ridiculous call with, whatever he has? Or if he fold, thats not the end of the world either, because then at least you won the hand. This time he had you beat, but focusing on that is super results oriented.

Thanks for the feedback both of you, I appreciate it. The hand took me off balance because I had just sat down for my session and hadn't warmed up if that makes sense lol. Figured it was ok, but I appreciate the feedback. I can certainly consider bet bet shove line in this run out too.

View attachment PokerStars Hand #261541857114.webm
Hand that bugged me today. My plan was to let him bluff off the stack because he's very aggro, especially when I cbet small. He's a reg with stats of 15/13/6(aggro) I mean against most players at this stake this is a pretty easy fold but I made a hero call vs him earlier in the day and he insulted me and was mad.

Anyway, plan was to call down pretty much anything but the turn just brought in the ace which a lot of his flush draws that he raises with are going to have. He CAN bet a merged range large (shown in hand two below) but he is very polar imo on the river here. An ace probably checks river? So maybe a set type hand or air? Possible merge but unlikely.

For context, here is a hand I played earlier vs him and got lucky but was planning to bluff river vs him if he checked.. but ended up getting some show down value instead and he bet.
View attachment PokerStars Hand #261541170081.webm

Do you call down with kings vs an tilted aggro reg? Not sure just how tilted he was though. Was a close spot I think?

Commenting on the KK hand. I think, your C-bet is to small, but I am ok with the rest of the hand. Especially with your small sizing the opponent can easily be checkraising both the A high flushdraw, 54 and wheeldraws, and then he got there on the turn. Its one of those, where on the flop we would be willing to put in at least 3 bets, but the runout was really bad, and therefore we changed our mind.

You do obviously beat a bluff, but I would not go to far down the rabbit hole of focusing on dynamics and beginning to assume, that someone is massively overbluffing, when they take this kind of line, just because there is some sort of history between you. Also you caught his bluff in that previous hand, and I would assume, that this makes him less inclined to bluff if anything.

Solver analysis
I plugged the hand into GTO Wizard, and the solver does go somewhat small on this board but still a bit bigger, than you did, betting 1,8BB. Nearly all hands are partially checked back except the very strongest like sets. Even KK check back around 20% of the time, so this is also an option to consider against an overly aggressive opponent. KK obviously call a flop check-raise, when it bet, and this raise is a little bigger than in your hand to 10BB.

On the turn the solver bet 22.6BB, when it bet, which is almost full pot. This is again somewhat bigger than the sizing, you were facing, and the solver simply fold all the previous overpairs, that are now reduced to second pair. Everything from 99-KK, and a decent amount of 8X also fold out. The hands, that continue, are all AX (or better) and hands with some kind of draw like partials of 44 and 55.

Since the solver does not have KK after the turn action, we can not analyse the river, but its fair to say, that would then obviously be a fold, if the turn was already a fold. However since you were facing smaller sizing, you are supposed to find a few more calls, and KK is the strongest hand, that fold on the turn. So all in all this seems fine and definitely not like a hand, you need to feel "bugged" by in any way.

fundiver199 said:

Commenting on the KK hand. I think, your C-bet is to small, but I am ok with the rest of the hand. Especially with your small sizing the opponent can easily be checkraising both the A high flushdraw, 54 and wheeldraws, and then he got there on the turn. Its one of those, where on the flop we would be willing to put in at least 3 bets, but the runout was really bad, and therefore we changed our mind.

You do obviously beat a bluff, but I would not go to far down the rabbit hole of focusing on dynamics and beginning to assume, that someone is massively overbluffing, when they take this kind of line, just because there is some sort of history between you. Also you caught his bluff in that previous hand, and I would assume, that this makes him less inclined to bluff if anything.

Solver analysis
I plugged the hand into GTO Wizard, and the solver does go somewhat small on this board but still a bit bigger, than you did, betting 1,8BB. Nearly all hands are partially checked back except the very strongest like sets. Even KK check back around 20% of the time, so this is also an option to consider against an overly aggressive opponent. KK obviously call a flop check-raise, when it bet, and this raise is a little bigger than in your hand to 10BB.

On the turn the solver bet 22.6BB, when it bet, which is almost full pot. This is again somewhat bigger than the sizing, you were facing, and the solver simply fold all the previous overpairs, that are now reduced to second pair. Everything from 99-KK, and a decent amount of 8X also fold out. The hands, that continue, are all AX (or better) and hands with some kind of draw like partials of 44 and 55.

Since the solver does not have KK after the turn action, we can not analyse the river, but its fair to say, that would then obviously be a fold, if the turn was already a fold. However since you were facing smaller sizing, you are supposed to find a few more calls, and KK is the strongest hand, that fold on the turn. So all in all this seems fine and definitely not like a hand, you need to feel "bugged" by in any way.

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I'm extremely grateful for the analysis. I read your original post before you deleted it, so I'm even more grateful that you did another one that included the solver analysis.

It all makes a lot of sense to be honest.